Netanyahu tells Israel ‘We are at war’ after Hamas launches an unprecedented attack, killing at leas

Interesting. Not shocking.

US and Qatar reach 'quiet understanding' not to release $6 billion sent to Iran for now, Treasury official tells House Democrats | CNN Politics

 

The population of the Golan Heights is around 50,000, approximately half are Israeli, most of the rest are Druze, not Palestinians. Not really sure whether the Druze are counted as part of Israel's population.

 

Bush, Bibi, Putin ... all these security hawks who make their name with cowboy rhetoric get high on their own supply of being badass tough guys and end up getting pantsed by farmers

 

I hate Bibi with a passion but let's not lump him in with cowboy talkers who don't understand the reality of conflict that they celebrate. From Wiki:

He trained as a combat soldier and served for five years in a special forces unit of the IDF, Sayeret Matkal. He took part in numerous cross-border assault raids during the 1967–70 War of Attrition, rising to become a team-leader in the unit. He was wounded in combat on multiple occasions.[29] He was involved in many other missions, including the 1968 Israeli raid on Lebanon and the rescue of the hijacked Sabena Flight 571 in May 1972, in which he was shot in the shoulder.[30][31] He was discharged from active service in 1972 but remained in the Sayeret Matkal reserves. Following his discharge, he left to study in the United States but returned in October 1973 to serve in the Yom Kippur War.[28][32] He took part in special forces raids along the Suez Canal against Egyptian forces before leading a commando attack deep inside Syrian territory, the details of which remain classified today.[33]

 

You are exactly right. And I should know. Post 1280, written by me, says:

 

There we go. That shows learning. Now if the President can get over his Todd-Grantham-level loyalty to Jake Sullivan and bring in a top-tier wartime consigliere, then I’ll really be impressed.

 

I'm not sure the Arafat ever really wanted a 2-state solution. When he gave interviews in English he indicated that he would be amenable to a 2-state solution; when he gave speeches in Arabic he used language to the effect that he envisioned a Palestinian state extending from the Mediterranean Sea to the Dead Sea and Jordan River. It seems to me that his vision of a Palestinian state did not include the existence of Israel. By the way I still think that Israel should try to negotiate a two state solution although not even negotiations are possible until Hamas is destroyed.

A little clarification: The phrase "From the River to the Sea" was in the original charter of Palestinian Liberation Organization. Although it was removed from the charter of the PLO/Fatah when the Oslo Accords were signed, Arafat continued to use it in Arabic language speeches to his followers.

 

I wrote post 1280, and it says:

And of course, there’s the third position, probably shared by most people here, that Israel must end Hamas, not kill anyone or everyone, just end Hamas. That is going to be a long war.

it most certainly does NOT say that Israel should expand beyond destroying Hamas, just the opposite.

 

Spot on.

 

Maybe, but I do think the special forces mindset is way more whack than guys who served in regular units. You get murderous weirdos like the American Sniper guy and other war criminals like the one Trump pardoned coming out of elite unit operator culture, and I find that suspect. Or fictional weirdos like Colonel Kurtz. I always come back to this fragment from The Dialectic of Enlightenment that haunts me:

 

From my links in Post 1250:


In the spring of 2010, Prime Minister Netanyahu began secret negotiations with Bashar Assad through American mediator Frederick Hoff. Israeli negotiator Michael Herzog referred to the talks as “a work in progress.”

“There was a detailed list of Israeli demands meant to serve as a basis for a peace agreement,” according to Herzog, “The idea,” he said, “was to see if we could drive a wedge in the radical axis of Iran-Syria-Hezbollah” by taking Syria out of the equation. Israel hoped to follow up a deal with Syria with a treaty with Lebanon.

Assad, however, would not make any commitments regarding its relationship with Iran. To pacify his right-wing base that opposes withdrawal from the Golan, Netanyahu’s office said, “this initiative was one of many proposed to Israel over the past few years. At no point did Israel accept this American initiative. The initiative is irrelevant, and its publication at this time stems from political considerations.”

This was just a quick example. Plenty of stronger examples of leaders protecting their flanks by denying any openness to a rumored deal and suggesting the opposite until they are ready to announce with what they think is an enforceable, defensible agreement. To do otherwise is political suicide.

 

He did. Based on a variety of early assessments I’ve read, at the very least it sounds like he redirected a bunch of his military to protect illegal settlements, instead of having them where they used to be directly patrolling the border with Gaza. They put too much reliance on their fence/wall. One of our posters (duchen) has claimed to have info about a cyber attack on their perimeter sensors. Which would also be… interesting… as far as where it came from (Iran, Russia, some other actor).

If the reports are true of Bibi ignoring the Egyptians 3 day advanced warning he should be gone. The “unity government” should ask for his immediate resignation and get unified behind a better leader. This man disgusts me. I’m not even Jewish, but I view him as dangerous to Israel’s Democratic values and reliability as an ally (similar to Erdogan in Turkey). Saw the Israeli govt released clip of him describing the atrocities to Biden (so the camera on Netanyahu the whole time), and I swear that mf’er was smirking. I honestly think he relishes this. Sick.

 

I got the post wrong, it was #1279. This is a quote from that post: "But by the end of it, Israel will have once again stacked up far more civilian bodies and committed greater atrocities, and nothing will change."

I see that as creating a moral equivalence of what Hamas just did and Israeli military operations in retaliation in an attempt to justify what Hamas did. It's the whole Hamas did is bad but so is what Israel is doing and nothing will change, so Israel should just accept it and try and move on.

@duchen has made the case over and over why a Jewish state cannot allow this to stand. When they say Never again, they mean it. And now that Bibi has set politics aside to form a coalition government to fight this war, you have posters here trying to say he is using this crisis to become an autocrat in Israel. They hate Bibi for some reason so much that they are harking back to MIHOP or LIHOP conspiracy theories Bush was accused of after 9/11. Why do you think that is?

 

Could have simply been similar to the US missing 9/11 chatter? Seems like a very nefarious act for someone already in power.

 

My apologies, I got the post wrong, it was #1279.

 

For another thread.

I don't think anything we don't like about Bibi is attributable to SOF service as opposed to regular military service. I was just saying he's not a talk tough guy who doesn't know the sheer horror of war and that it's not a movie.

More likely attributable to being educated in Philadelphia. That type of education leads to tweets like this ;>

 

Yeah, Arafat was a politician - a very good one too, you are going to say different things to different people, I dont think that necessarily means anything beyond trying to keep support to accomplish a goal. That a two state solution has basically failed in 2023 has people looking back to "prove" that it was inevitable all along.

 

And really, anyone that didn't want a two state solution didn't have to do much of anything. It requires very little subterfuge to achieve the status quo.

 

Or a fall out of a window

 

To be clear I don’t necessarily believe Netanyahu “intentionally” let this happen or that it was a false flag. Not going down that conspiracy nuttery. I do, however, think he dropped the ball big time (which should go without saying). The lack of an initial response on such a heavily patrolled border was commented on by many. But if the patrols were all redirected to different settlements, it would explain things somewhat and show how warped priorities (pandering to the Orthodox population) undermined their national defense.